Three Strange Theories You Might Believe After Attending Arizona's International UFO Congress

If you can, you should sneak away from your comparatively corporate gig sometime this week for the 2012 meeting of the International UFO Congress. The group, based here in Phoenix has held this annual conference since 1991 and has seen attendance climb every year.

The 2012 session starts tomorrow at Fort McDowell Resort and Casino and will present notable researchers and witnesses of alien activity like Whitley Strieber, Stanton Friedman and Arizona's own Travis Walton, subject of the book and film Fire in The Sky, which told of the logger's 1975 abduction in the White Mountains.

As Web-dwelling fanboy, I am usually pre-loaded with a fistful of snark and self righteousness, but I'm doing my best to keep it at bay this week. I enjoy the annual confab of the IUFOC and fully support their proselytizing for crop-circles, close encounters other contact with extraterrestrial entities. Stranger things have happened - after all, the fat kid from Superbad may soon be known as "Academy-Award Winner Jonah Hill," so who are we to say what's impossible?

Here are three more pieces of homegrown weirdness that I (kinda) want to believe:

Back in 1909, or so the legend goes, two Smithsonian funded explorers discovered an intricate network of tunnels deep in the bedrock of the Grand Canyon. Inside they found a cache of Egyptian mummies, Indian artifacts, and Asian relics, all of which suggested visitations from ancient Eastern societies long before Columbus discovered the new world.

The Phoenix Gazette posted the discovery as front page news on April 5th of that year, but no follow-up story ever developed and the two explorers have since been lost to history.

I don't know about you, but this whole story is begging to be National Treasur-ized, if only to get footage of Nic Cage chewing scenery whilst riding a burro.

​2. The Mogollon Monster

Somewhere along the Rim, a distant cousin of the Yeti is rumored to prowl the forest. Based on eye-witness accounts, the Mogollon Monster is over seven feet tall and covered in a thick coat of dark or reddish brown fur.

Often thought to be a physical manifestation of a vengeful Native American spirit, a 1903 report by the Arizona Republican claimed that the man-ape was once seen drinking the blood of two cougars it had beaten to death with a large club.

Note to NAU frat guys...maybe you want to sit out the local edition of "Messing with Sasquatch."

1. Page, Arizona - The Shadow Government's Transit Station

It is widely thought in conspiracy lore that just outside of Dulce, New Mexico, a shadowy arm of the New World Order is conducting experiments in psychokinesis, mind control and human/alien hybrids in a multi-level subterranean base.

In order to ferry workers between this black-ops location and the ultra secretive Area 51 in Nevada, some 700 miles away, a high speed (possibly magnetic levitation) train system was constructed deep below the Earth's surface. Inexplicably, the train is not just a straight shot and instead has a spur line that ends somewhere below the City of Page, Arizona.

No one has yet discovered the connection between nefarious, government-sponsored mad science and the Biggest Little Town in the Desert, but the place HAS played host to several sci-fi films including Hulk, Evolution, Eight Legged Freaks, two Planet of the Apes films and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. When viewed as a whole, one wonders if the town elders are not so subtly hinting about their sleepy hamlet's role in an inter-dimensional conspiracy.